Character Theme – Four Remedies for Five Sick Dukes--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Drusus is a man of slightly above average height, at least relative to his fellow citizens of Florine. He's somewhat wiry, with a frame that's thinner than it ought to be, but he's by no means malnourished. His skin, though swarthy by Vasili standards, lacks the bronzing finish of years under the sun, which can be attributed to his previously cloistered lifestyle. His eyes and his his hair are both dark brown, and he keeps his face cleanly shaven and his hair cut short. His features are characteristically Florine, with almost almond-shaped eyes, an aquiline nose, and thin, drawn lips. He dresses well, but the garb he affords himself is perpetually shrouded by an olive and gold filligree cloak, the signature garb of the modern Synod.
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【
Full Name】
Mauro Nicodemo 【
Alias】
Drusus, Academia Erudite 【
Gender】
Male 【
Age】
33 【
Sexuality】
Bisexual【
Birth Place】
Calraddi, The City of Martyrs【
Nation/Allegiance】
The Kingdom of Florine, The Florine Academia Synod【
Profession】
Sorcerer, Academia Agent --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
【
Personality】
To be raised by the Synod, to be discovered in one's youth by the shadowy fraternity, is to be committed entirely to the so-called 'virtues' that they have lived under for a hundred generations. Drusus, just as those before him, was indoctrinated, broken and built back up into a person very different from the one he arrived as, so full of fear and anger. He was taught from the very beginning to value secrecy and skepticism, to acknowledge that the world, at best, didn't trust the power he was capable of wielding and, at worst, hated him for it. He was taught not to reciprocate this fear or hatred, but to accept it and, when appropriate, use it to his advantage. To be relegated to the shadows, to be ostracized, had advantages all its own or so he was taught.
It wouldn't be fair to him to say that he became cold under the tutelage of Florine's grandmasters, but he did grow reserved. He took the lessons of those who came before him and applied them, and the passionate young man they took in became quiet. What had first resembled paranoia to him steadily began to make more sense as he delved deeper into the mysteries of magic and the ancient society that had endured thousands of years through highs and lows. He naturally grew into the shape his tutors intended for him, he detached himself from the strong opinions he once held dear and embraced the borderline sociopathic pragmatism that the double-faced sorcerers of Florine devoted themselves wholly to.
He had to play the part of a coolly professional civil servant, dance to the sordid tune of Florine politics as nought but a servant. There was no way around this, and so he grew good at saying what others wanted to hear. Upon full induction into the Synod as a true Erudite he pursued work under the State's elite and ingratiated himself to many of them. They saw a hard worker, a professional whose supernatural skills were at their disposal, entirely divorced of their sinister connotations.
There was always ambition to the Academia Synod however, there were always shadowy agendas at work just under the surface. They had managed to put on a good face for so long, to be regarded as at least somewhat trustworthy by those that held their leash, but in truth they shared the same intentions as their more anarchic kin across the borders and across the sea. Their knowledge must be preserved. Their power must be preserved. Their survival must be ensured. Drusus was no different, and was driven by his own ambitions just as much by the ambitions of his superiors.
Unscrupulous as he might be, he took particular pleasure in the company of others and especially in the exchange of knowledge and ideas. He was deprived of it for over a decade. Those he had associated with in his time as an apprentice had made contact with those of the outside world absolutely refreshing to him, because just as there was so much to glean from the libraries and the debate and discourse of the Academia Synod there was even more to learn from the people of Florine and beyond, even if they were wrong. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
【
History】
Mauro Nicodemo is a secret name. The name of a boy who died far too young. It was a name given to the oldest child of Marian Nicodemo, who was a junior merchant in service of one of Florine's most powerful guilds, an institution that had made a fortune for itself and its members through the creation of war materiel and glass. They were based in Calraddi, which was more colloquially known as the 'City of Martyrs' for the body count the municipal authorities of old racked up during the birth of the Church of Light.
Marian was by all accounts a decent father, but also one whose work took him to the far corners of the known world. He carried out the movement of goods, the guilds funded him and those like him, the young ambitious merchants, the nouveau riche, and provided them an opportunity to prove themselves on the more hazardous end of Florine business. He afforded his family a fine house on Calraddi's perfumed canals and afforded them a life without want, and so while he was gone more often than he was home there was a sense that he did care.
Marian's wife - Mauro's mother - was the heiress to the fortune of a sonless provincial magistrate, and had made quite a name for herself in the circles of the Florine affluent as a poet and ideologue. Where Mauro's father's influence was felt through the coin that funneled back to them by way of the guilds, Mauro's mother - Alisanne - made hers known in the active raising of the children. She afforded them the greatest classical tutors of Florine and immersed them in the ancient Florine philsophical and mathematical schools of thought.
Mauro Nicodemo took to his studies well, but he was always a restless boy, and more disposed to mischief on the town than he was to listening to the graybearded academics whom his mother had contracted. That's not to say he was rebellious, but his spirit, as it were, always sought to propel him beyond the impromptu classroom of his mother's solar. The workings of the city - the condottiere and the officials both - always fascinated him. He could imagine himself as a gallant mercenary. As a prominent statesman. Perhaps both? He had no mind for poetry or sculpture or painting as he found, and as his mother was most dismayed to find.
People were always of more interest to him. The interests of people, their interactions, what made them all 'tick' and would make one do one thing and another do another thing. He developed a knack for lying and for speechcraft, and would often put such skills to use for petty things, like getting out of trouble with his caretakers or his mother. For wheedling this or that out of the people of Calraddi. Sympathetic bakers or fishmongers or the like would often find themselves giving him far more than they ought to.
It was a languid childhood, a comfortable one, the sort that so often ultimately creates spoiled and viperous adults. By all rights Mauro could have become the next cutthroat senator of provincial Calraddi. He could have taken bribes and kept assassins on retainer and lived in opulence that even his well-off parents could not have imagined. But it was not so. Just weeks after his sixteenth birthday a cabal of well-dressed, but heavily shrouded men arrived at the Nicodemo estate along with a number of condottiere, and they asked for Mauro and his mother by name.
The leader of the party of five quite casually explained that by means of divination they had determined that the young Mauro was cursed with the power of sorcery. Now, were it not for the armed escort and the olive and gold filligree cloaks the two of them would perhaps be skeptical. They wanted to be skeptical. To be cursed in Florine was to be spirited away in the night or killed. The gravity of the situation was lost on no one in that room. The wizards and their attendant soldiers presented Mauro a choice: he would go with them and his supposed curse would be confirmed and studied in greater detail, or they would take him by force and, failing that, end his life and the danger he posed to society.
He said his tearful goodbyes, he surrendered himself to the party that had come to collect him. Then a lump of tumorous hatred began to grow in his heart. His freedom had been taken from him. This singular thought possessed him as they led him, blindfolded, to a carriage which rolled off across the city, first through familiar streets and then further onwards to unfamiliar ones. His creature comforts were gone. His lessons were done. The young, foolish infatuation with the neighbor girl was done. In one afternoon he had gone from prince to slave.
He was taken from the carriage and escorted, still blindfolded, to a gondola, and from there poled down a maze of eerie, quiet canals. And then there came the telltale acoustics of a canal tunnel. One that did not end. And then the gondola was moored and he was pulled bodily from it and his blindfold was removed. There he stood on a very spartan dock with the five cloaked men, those he supposed were in fact sorcerers. A great oaken double door stood open to them, and beyond was a corridor lit only by paired candelabras. The acrid stench of sandalwood incense wafted from within, replacing the stench of the canals.
Dark chambers and darker hallways. The persistent stink of all varieties of incense burning his nose. The leering, skeletal dead interred in their wizarding cloaks. Propped up, marionette-like skeletons stood transfixed, accusatory or pleading in their artifical stances. The deeper they went into the earth by way of hurried twisting and turning the more interred dead they passed. Now bones lined the walls, bodies were set in vertically stacked loculi graves. It was a catacomb that they walked him through. One that stretched on for miles. A catacomb of dead sorcerers.
Further beyond there came the ascent into old gardens rife with exotic plantlife and sculptures both ancient and grand. Marble. Obsidian. Palms. Jungle flowers. The cool, misted expanse of green gave way to what Mauro could only describe as a villa. A compound, of sorts, perhaps. It was built in the likeness of old pagan Florine temples, with great columns and walls of immaculate white marble. And, for the next fifteen years of his life these grounds, and the buildings that had stood upon them for centuries served as his home. It was an immaculate institution that presided over a largely depopulated district, one that had been abandoned following a ravaging fire.
It was within these walls that he was inducted into the esoteric mysteries of sorcery, and into the ritual-steeped society that had governed Florine's magic-users for innumerable generations. He was taught to control the power that was coaxed from him, and he was also taught the accompanying of truths of 'real philosophy' by those who derided his old teachers as blind. He was made to study the works of Church-shunned hermetics and gnostics by the light of red candles. He was made to wield his power for applications both practical and ritual in his training.
Sorrow and frustration lingered in his heart for a long while, but the nameless apprentice that had once been Mauro Nicodemo took to his studies and his new powers eagerly. He was amongst likeminded peers, all of whom had been separated from their old lives and their old kin in similar fashions. They grew close. A tight knit community of not only scholars, but friends. New family bonds grew out of necessity and shared profession. The 'curse' had driven them close together.
He progressed from the fundamentals of sorcery into more specialized advanced crafts. He embraced his curse and developed more and more control over the powers of illusion and divination, and his studies gravitated back towards more mundane concerns such as politics and the workings of non-magical society. He was to be groomed for work abroad, or so his master explained to him during one lesson involving the extended projection of a false apple onto a table. He would take an active part in the survival of their society, starting with service under the Florine Senate.
And so, just as ritual brought him into the Florine Academia Synod, ritual would also bring him back 'out' of it. He was made into a true sorcerer in his own right and given the chance to be born again with a new name. As was the custom amongst the Synod's membership he elected to take the name of a historic Florine figure of importance, and in Mauro's case he chose the much-beloved orator Drusus, who was struck down for defying a tyrant who sought to keep his power by military force.
Drusus made a name for himself amongst certain less savory circles of Florine society, as much for frustrating ambitions as fulfilling them. He switched sides as often as he formed coalitions. He employed sorcery as much as he employed trickery and social engineering. He was for the most part regarded as an asset by members of the Senate, but he was also regarded as somewhat untrustworthy. He was a man with his own ambitions, with a certain zealous drive that propelled him, and a wizard with ambitions and drive was something to be worried about. He had on more than one occasion had to deal with nameless, faceless catspaws as well as pressure from the Church and the Florine State Gendarmerie.
The Academia Synod's gaze turned north independent of the eternally bickering Senate's. Vasili's war with Dawn was already a fact of life, and indeed it was a beneficial one for the neutral Florine. The traders were pleased enough with the status quo, and so the Senate and the condottiere remained uninvolved in the conflict. The Synod was more concerned with the balance of power - and by extension the plague - than with war profiteering and the guilds.
Ultimately, out of all of the debate on the opportunities presented by the plague and the war came a singular decision. The plague must be understood and it must be stopped. Drusus was selected from the ranks of sorcerers as an ideal candidate and given an appropriate cover to travel north, under the patronage of a Florine senator who had business and political relationships in The Crossroads. And so he went north promptly as could be, far from his old stomping grounds of cutthroat Florine politics.
Drusus set his own machinations into motion, now far away from the watchful gaze of the Synod and Senate both. He had a plan that would completely shatter both organizations' expectations of what he could accomplish. He studied the Consano through personal contacts and magical divination. A small collection of individuals, but one populated by big names, a group with just the sort of potential combination of talent and naivety to help him pursue his own goals.
The Plague would be stopped. He committed himself to this. But he also committed himself to so much more.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
【
Skills and Abilities】
Drusus is, first and foremost, trained extensively in the magical arts and had the advantage of learning in a professional institution. He was not impeded by the pitfalls of self-education and as such has a considerable length and breadth of magical power that he can reliably call upon. He has a particular penchant for more subtle invocations, such as those involving illusion or divination.
Secondly, Drusus is a learned man, by virtue of the traditional elite Florine education and the less conventional lore he delved into in his time as an apprentice in the Florine Academia Synod. He is particularly well versed in the more scholarly aspects of sorcery, alchemy, and spirituality. He's also trained in the finer points of the law, mathematics, and philosophy.
In his service with the Senate he picked up on a number of more rake-ish talents such as the ability to use lockpicks and make use of conventional sleight of hand. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
【
Weapons/Tools and Magic】
Weapons/Tools
Drusus travels light. He'll typically carry only his most essential reagents for spellcraft, such as hagstooth and scalpbrine, and will make use of a variety of pouches and pockets to store them away. He also tends to keep a pair of spellbooks on his person, both bound with black leather and stamped with the sigil of the Florine Senate. The spellbooks aren't strictly necessary for spellcasting, but they do streamline the process of invocation. They function of a focusing tool first and reference material second.
Drusus also carries a proper channeling focus at all times, and depending on the circumstances he'll carry either a scepter or a proper stave. The scepter is a heavy copper implement that's approximately two feet in length that features acid-etched scripts and patterns. The stave is around six feet in length and is carved of dark ash heartwood. A heavy globe of copper is set at its top. These two implements are intended as a means of focusing his power, and they are absolutely necessary for any spellwork beyond the most basic cantrips.
He'll also tend to bring along some basic components for alchemical works, such as for common poultices and remedies. He's a layman at best with them, but it helps to be prepared, or so he reminds himself. And, for the purpose of being prepared he also keeps a knife spirited away in one boot and a set of lockpick's tools in the other. Magical SpellsThe Florine Academia Synod pursues sorcery in a very methodical fashion, breaking down each invocation into its component parts in order to make the learning and casting into a more formulaic, streamlined process. Each invocation is, at least on paper, divided into several 'Truths', which are treated as components. For example, to join the Truths of 'Fire' and 'Projection' would theoretically produce something along the lines of a fireball. Of course this is all magical theory, and many of the Synod's best and brightest are more spontaneous than the Truth system would imply. The mental and physical strain of using Truths increases exponentially with each addition.
Drusus repetoire is as follows, in no particular order:
Projection: To extend one's reach beyond one's mortal coil. At its most fundamental form this can allow one to use their five senses as if they were 'projecting' themself. In essence it's a more intimate form of scrying, but its range is limited to the sorcerer's sight (across a room they're in, a valley from a hill, etc.) unless further Truths are applied, such as fixate, which permits one to truly scry from afar.
Expansion: To push with the fundamental power of the Curse. At its most basic this can allow a sorcerer to shove indiscriminately.
Contraction: To gather the power of the Curse around oneself. At its most fundamental it can allow a sorcerer to ward off a foe's strike.
Impulse: To strike with the Curse's primal power. A very basic form of magical power, with some of the basic manifestation of magical power (e.g. telekinetic bolts) falling under this classification.
Shadow: To play with or even create an absence of light, often for the purpose of deception. At its most fundamental form this can allow one to deprive someone of their ability to see in a localized area.
Light: To play with or even create illumination, often for the purpose of deception. At its most basic it can provide illumination in a cave or perhaps dazzle a foe.
Fixate: To use various mediums to locate something or someone. The work of oracles and diviners would fall under this Truth.
Ward: To use magical power in order to link one's senses with a particular area or object. Its disturbance will be known to whoever's maintaining the ward.
The Four Elements: Earth, Wind, Fire, and Air are often employed in conjunction with other Truths with intent destructive or otherwise.
Worm: To interfere in the workings of the mortal mind by means of suggestion or confusion. Worm sorcery is best applied against those who are unprepared for it, those who don't suspect one of being a sorcerer. A skeptical mind, or a hostile one, is almost impossible to affect. It is most effective when applied to easier suggestions, such as telling someone what they want to hear. It's far from outright 'mind control'. 
